


Reclaiming Tomorrow

by sinead_smith (smac89)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Protective Siblings, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 21:25:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11975319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smac89/pseuds/sinead_smith
Summary: Steve Rogers thought she died sixty-seven years ago. He was wrong. SHIELD thought she died twenty-eight years ago. They were wrong. Hydra thought they could kill her twenty-two years ago. They were wrong.She thought she was alone. She was wrong.





	Reclaiming Tomorrow

The call came from a blocked number, at five o’clock in the morning. Sam didn’t even know if it was his or Steve’s, but Steve had just groaned and dragged a pillow over his head so it was Sam who fumbled the phone off the nightstand in between the hotel beds and held it to his ear.

 

He didn’t even have the chance to mumble a greeting before Natasha said, “How soon can you get to Chicago?”

 

Sam was silent for almost ninety seconds, his brain trying to wake up enough to process the question. “Why the fuck would we go to Chicago?” he finally managed.

 

“Did you know the Winter Soldier has only ever failed two missions?” Natasha didn’t answer his question. But to be fair, he hadn’t answered hers.

 

“What?” Sam replied. It was too damn early in the morning for a conversation made entirely of questions.

 

“In March of ‘92, the Winter Soldier was sent to Ottawa to eliminate a woman named Rebecca Moore. Mission failure. Want to know why?”

 

Sam rubbed his face and sighed. “Why?”

 

“Meet me in Chicago and we’ll find out,” Natasha said with a teasing lilt to her voice, and hung up.

 

“Fuck,” Sam whispered to himself. He dropped the phone back onto the nightstand, noting that it was Steve’s. He really needed to put a pin or a password or _something_ on his phone. He grabbed one of the pillows on his bed and lobbed it across the room. It smacked into Steve’s shoulder.

 

“We need to get to Chicago,” Sam announced.

 

Steve dragged the pillow down from his face. “Why?” he mumbled.

 

“‘Cause Natasha said so,” Sam told him.

 

Steve squinted at him in the dim light coming through the cheap curtains. “She say why?”

 

“Something to do with the Winter Soldier,” Sam said, peeling the sheet back but remaining where we was sprawled on the bed.

 

Steve pushed himself into a sitting position, instantly awake and alert. _Damn_ . How did he _do_ that? “What about Bucky?” he demanded.

 

“Said he only ever had two mission failures,” Sam relayed obediently. “Us, I guess, and a woman in Ottawa in 1992. Natasha has some kind of intel in Chicago.”

 

Steve reached for his cell phone, turned on the lock screen to check the time. Why the man couldn’t just wear a watch like a normal person, Sam didn’t know.

 

“Chicago. That’s what, three hours from here?”

 

“Just about,” Sam agreed.

 

“Then shake a leg, soldier!” Steve said, getting to his feet and slapping Sam’s pillow down onto his chest as he made his way to the bathroom.

 

“I was an Airman!” Sam yelled. Steve slammed the bathroom door.

 

They were in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hydra was not discriminate with the locations of their safe houses, and the two of them had been all over the Midwest helping local law enforcement agencies clean out Hydra nests.

 

Steve, of course, had wanted to charge off into the sunset after his not-so-dead-best-friend, and only relented after Sam, Natasha, Hill, _and_ Sharon Carter had pointed out the stupidity of trying to hunt down a man who had been trained, programed, and equipped to literally disappear. Within hours of dragging Steve onto the bank of the Potomac, Bucky Barnes was, appropriately enough, a ghost. There had been no trace of him, not a single blip on the radar.

 

So Sam had managed to refocus Steve’s restless energy into doing some _actual_ good. Natasha was ostensibly keeping her ear to the ground, and had promised to call as soon as she heard anything. Which she had. So now Sam was packed, checked out of the hotel, and on the road in under twenty minutes. At least he didn’t have to drive.

 

“Wake me up when we get there,” he said, and leaned his seat back. He wasn’t in the Air Force anymore. He wasn’t going to operate on four hours of sleep if he didn’t have to.

 

XxxXxxX

 

They met Natasha at a neighborhood park. It was not quite eight in the morning, so the park was empty, the grass still dewy from overnight condensation. The redhead was seated at a picnic table, her hair pulled back into a high tail and a pair of over-sized aviators concealing most of her face.

 

“Hey, Tasha,” Steve greeted. She got up and hugged him.

 

“Hey, Steve,” she replied. She eyed Sam over the tops of her glasses. “Sam.” He did not get a hug.

 

“Natasha,” Sam returned, because she was Touchy with a capital “T” and there were three people in existence who got to call her “Tasha” and one of them was dead. Neither of the remaining two were Sam.

 

“Mind telling us why we’re here?” Steve asked, sitting down across from her at the table. Sam chose to sit next to Steve because Natasha kept devices capable of delivering high-voltage electric shocks on her person and you did not want to accidentally brush up against her.

 

“Sam bring you up to speed?” she asked, pushing her sunglasses back up her nose.

 

“Not much speed,” Sam pointed out.

 

She gave him a Look, and he stopped talking. She pulled a manila folder out of her messenger bag and placed it on the table, flipping it open. “This is the personnel file for one Rebecca Moore, SHIELD Special Service agent from 1979-1986, when she was reported as KIA.”

 

There wasn’t much. No photo, no background, just a few redacted documents and a death certificate. Natasha slid the top few pages out of the way until she found the one she wanted. “Look at this,” she instructed.

 

Sam leaned over to investigate when Steve picked it up. It was a document listing next-of-kin in the case of medical emergencies and death. The names on the list were, in order: Margaret Sousa, Daniel Sousa, and Howard Stark.

 

“Stark?” Sam asked, looking at Natasha. “Her next of kin was Howard Stark?”

 

“Not just that,” Steve said tightly, putting the page back down. “Margaret Sousa. That’s Peggy’s married name.”

 

“Yup,” Natasha said with a nod.

 

“Who was she?” Sam asked. “What does she have to do with the Winter Soldier?”

 

Natasha reached into her bag and pulled out another mostly redacted document. “Look here,” she instructed. “It says ‘Mission Failure: Rebecca Moore, March 19th, 1992.”

 

“Why would Hydra send the Winter Soldier to kill a woman who’d been dead for six years?” Steve asked, raising his eyebrows.

 

“And why did he fail?” Natasha added.

 

“This is all very interesting, Tasha, but why are we _here_?” Steve demanded.

 

Natasha slid her sunglasses partway down her nose and nodded over Steve’s shoulder. “1837 Steel Hollow Drive,” she said.

 

Steve and Sam both turned to look at the house in question. Small, neatly-kept, completely non-descript. “What about it?” Steve pressed.

 

“Owned by one Rebecca Moore, born October 5th, 1986,” Natasha told them with a smirk.

 

Sam checked the death certificate. “Born the same day that _this_ Rebecca Moore was listed KIA. Could be a coincidence.”

 

“Do I look like the kind of girl to wake you up at five o’clock for _coincidence_ ?” Natasha asked reproachfully. “ _This_ Rebecca Moore’s entire income is comprised of Stark Industry stock purchased in January of ‘92, a month after Howard Stark was killed and, _coincidentally_ , when Stark Industries stock went up for sale for the first time. Forty-eight percent of the company was sold to keep it afloat in the wake of Stark’s death.”

 

Sam gave Natasha a narrow-eyed look. “I sense an ‘and’ coming.”

 

She smiled at him. “ _And_ , Rebecca Moore of 1837 Steel Hollow Drive, Chicago, is the current owner of _all forty-eight percent_.”

 

Sam blinked a few times. “Wait,” he said when he could formulate words again. “Are you saying that the woman who lives _there_ owns almost half of the most profitable company in America? She’d be, like, a _billionaire_.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Natasha said with a nod. “If she wanted to, she could co-run the company with Pepper and Tony.”

 

“Jesus,” Sam muttered, shaking his head.

 

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Steve said, a frown creasing his forehead. “Rebecca Moore works for SHIELD. She’s falsely listed as KIA, survives an assassination attempt by the Winter Soldier, buys a controlling share in Stark Industries, and then… retires in Chicago?”

 

“Not exactly,” Natasha said. “Remember how _this_ Rebecca Moore listed her birth date as ‘86? There’s no way she could be the _same_ Rebecca Moore that worked for SHIELD.”

 

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “Then what _is_ going on here?”

 

Natasha frowned and straightened. “I dunno,” she said in an odd tone of voice. “But I think we’re about to find out. That’s the third time that blue sedan has circled the block, and that man on the porch of the corner house has been smoking the same cigarette for half an hour.”

 

“Hydra?” Steve asked, immediately going on high alert.

 

“Possibly,” Natasha murmured. “Sam, you’re with me. Steve, head round the back.”

 

“Let me grab my shield from the car,” Steve said, getting to his feet.

 

“You packing?” Natasha asked Sam, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head.

 

“These days? Always,” Sam told her.

 

They approached the house straight on, Sam shadowing Natasha up to the front door. Natasha rang the doorbell and stepped back, the picture of patience. There was a long silence, and then the door unlocked, cracking open just far enough so Sam could see a young woman, late twenties, probably; brunette, wearing a gray t-shirt and black yoga pants.

 

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking from Natasha to Sam and back.

 

“Miss Moore, my name is Natasha Romanoff, I work for the Avengers,” Natasha said. Sam felt his eyebrows shoot up. Okay. So there were just going there. Fine. He could roll with that. “We have reason to believe you may be in danger.”

 

The woman froze. Not in a deer-in-the-headlights way, but like a cat catching sight of a strange dog, poised for a moment deciding whether to attack or retreat.

 

“Shit,” she said after a few heartbeats, and slammed the door.

 

Natasha was already moving, and her shoulder hit the door before the woman could deadbolt it. It flew open inwards, but the woman was already gone. Natasha barrelled into the house with Sam on her heels. Sam got a brief impression of the house--entryway, living room, kitchen--before they reached the open back door and there she was, about to vault the eight-foot privacy fence when Steve appeared from behind the storage shed and caught her around the waist, throwing her to the ground.

 

She hit the grass and rolled, coming up to her feet with far more grace than any human had a right to, and was about to change direction, to make another break for freedom, when she hesitated again for a split second.

 

“ _Becs_?” Steve breathed.

 

Sam had never heard Steve sound like that, probably because he’d never heard Steve talk to Bucky Barnes before. It was the voice of a broken man, who thought everyone he’d ever known and loved were dead and gone.

 

 _Now_ the woman had the frozen-in-the-headlights look. She balanced on the balls of her bare feet, trapped, surrounded on three sides with the fence at her back.

 

“Shit,” she said again.

 

Sam had a good view of her now and could see there was something familiar about her, in the shape of her nose and chin, in her steel-gray eyes and the set of her shoulders. He could swear he’d seen her somewhere before…

 

“Becca,” Steve said, stepping forward. “ _How_?”

 

The woman cleared her throat awkwardly. “Hi, Stevie,” she said, her voice pitched high and nervous.

 

Steve’s expression went blank and unimpressed. “Hi?” he echoed. “ _Hi_ ? I’ve been awake for two years. _Two years_ . And I get _hi_?”

 

“The fuck else would I say?” she snapped back at him, nervousness evaporating. “‘Hey Stevie, welcome back to the land of the living. Oh, by the way, not dead! Looks like that’s going around.’”

 

“If your ma could hear the mouth on you,” Steve retorted, now looking more annoyed than shocked.

 

“Well, she’s not here, and you know what they say about snitches,” the woman--Becca--said.

 

“So I take it you two know each other?” Natasha said, sounding bored.

 

“Yeah, you could say that,” Steve said tightly. “Sam, Tasha, meet Rebecca Katherine Barnes.”

 

Rebecca Katherine Barnes crossed her arms and glared at Steve.

 

A lightbulb went off over Sam’s head. “When you say _Barnes_ , do you mean…?”

 

“She’s Bucky’s kid sister,” Steve replied grimly.

 

“I am no one’s _kid_ sister,” Rebecca snapped angrily. “I’m ninety-one fucking years old.”

 

“I’m still older than you,” Steve shot back.

 

“Yeah, but I was _awake_ ,” Rebecca returned. Before Steve could come up with an equally snappy reply, Sam managed to interject.

 

“Can we go back to the _how_ ?” he said loudly. “Because if you don’t mind me saying, ma’am, you look _damn_ fine for ninety-one.”

 

Rebecca turned to give him a long once-over, and then raised an eyebrow. “Stevie. Looks like you’ve made _smart_ friends this time. Sam, was it?”

 

“Yeah, hi, nice to meet you,” Sam said impatiently. “You mind explaining sometime this week?”

 

Rebecca sighed. “Short answer? Stark.”

 

“And long answer?” Natasha asked.

 

“Lou Gehrig's disease, medical experimentation, Stark,” Rebecca said.

 

“You let Howard _experiment_ on you?” Steve demanded sharply.

 

Rebecca rounded on him indignantly. “Do you know the fatality rate of ALS, Steve? It’s one hundred percent! I was not ready to die. Also, you have _no_ right to fucking talk! You signed up for medical experimentation first chance you got!”

 

“She’s not wrong,” Natasha added unhelpfully.

 

“That was different,” Steve said impatiently.

 

“Different how?” Rebecca challenged. “‘Cause you’re a guy?”

 

“‘Cause you had your ma, and Lizzie, and people who cared about you,” Steve replied.

 

Rebecca abruptly lost her anger, shoulders slumping. “Ma died, Steve,” she said, sounding tired. “Less than a year after… She never really got over it. Started drinking, taking pills to sleep. Then one day she just… didn’t wake up. And Lizzie met a war vet, got hitched, moved south. I didn’t have anyone left.”

 

Steve went still, staring down at her, mouth working silently for a few seconds. “Becs… I… I’m sorry.”

 

Rebecca crossed her arms and squinted up at him. “Peggy Carter came round the apartment one day. Offered me a job. Didn’t have any bright prospects. Worked for her for two years before my hands started shaking. Went downhill pretty fast after that.”

 

“While all of this has been _endlessly_ fascinating,” Natasha interrupted. “But we have Hydra closing in so it’s probably time we leave.”

 

“Hydra?” Rebecca demanded sharply. “You sure?”

 

“Pretty sure,” Natasha replied.

 

“Fuck me,” Rebecca muttered, and bolted between Sam and Natasha toward the house. Sam turned to follow her, but by the time he reached the back door she was out of sight. She appeared a moment later from the direction of what Sam assumed was the bedroom, hopping on one foot while she slid an untied sneaker onto her other foot. She held a pistol in her free hand and a backpack slung over one shoulder.

 

“How much time do we have?” she demanded of Sam right before the first Hydra agent appeared at the front door. Sam reacted without thinking, and put a bullet in between the man’s eyebrows. Rebecca cursed again and dove back behind the corner, dropping to one knee.

 

Sam got to cover behind the couch before the next Hydra operative made it through the door, and then Steve was there, shield up, pounding along the line from back door to front. Bullets pinged off the shield as he went, and then he body-checked the two agents at the door with the shield, sending them flying. Steve slammed the front door closed, threw the deadbolt, and then turned to look back at Sam and Rebecca.

 

“Let’s go,” he ordered. “Tasha’s keeping the back clear so we can get to the cars.”

 

Sam let Steve take the lead back to the backyard while Rebecca fell in behind him. Sam brought of the rear, backing out of the house with his gun raised. The front door was kicked in just as Sam cleared the back, and he swung the door closed, putting another layer between him and the enemy.

 

There was a gap in the fence behind the shed, invisible to the casual eye, and Natasha was waiting for them, a gun in each hand, eyes watchful. They shuffled positions, Rebecca slipping through the gap first, then Sam, Natasha, and Steve taking their six.

 

But as they stepped out into the open sidewalk, two Hydra agents opened fire from the cover of the blue sedan.

 

“I’ll take care of this,” Steve said. “You guys go.” With that he took off at a run towards the car, bullets ricocheting from his shield.

 

Natasha broke into a flat-out run towards the park, Rebecca easily keeping pace beside her. Sam loped along behind them, keeping one eye on Steve playing wrecking ball with Hydra. They reached the cars without difficulty, Natasha abandoning her nondescript sedan for Sam and Steve’s SUV. Sam still managed to claim the driver’s seat.

 

He peeled out of the park’s parking lot and swung around onto Steel Hollow Drive, screeching to a halt beside the now-totalled sedan and three unconscious Hydra goons. Steve flung himself into the backseat next to Rebecca and Sam floored the gas.

 

Rebecca twisted to look back as they drove away. “Damn,” she said quietly. “I liked that house.”

 

“I gotta ask, though,” Sam said. “You’re rich. You could live anywhere. Why Chicago?”

 

“How did you--” Rebecca cut herself off. “I knew I shoulda used a different alias,” she muttered. Then louder, “No one was looking for me in Chicago.”

 

“You’re right, though,” Natasha commented. “You really should have used a different alias.”

 

Rebecca rubbed her nose. “I thought I covered my tracks well enough.”

 

“You did,” Natasha replied. “It was _really_ hard to find you.”

 

“Not hard enough,” Rebecca pointed out.

 

“Anyone mind telling me where the hell we should be going?” Sam broke in. “I mean, I can just drive aimlessly in circles for a while, but I’d rather have a destination.”

 

“Cincinnati,” Rebecca said before anyone else could reply. “I have a restart cache there. I’d like to pick up a few things.”

 

“Any objections?” Sam asked. When the car was silent, he nodded. “All right, then. Cincinnati it is.”

 

They drove in silence for a good fifteen minutes before Steve spoke up. “Why?” he asked Rebecca. “Why didn’t you try to reach out to me? Two years, Becs.”

 

“You were wrapped up in SHIELD,” Rebecca replied defensively. “I couldn’t have gotten anywhere close to you without tipping them off. I worked for SHIELD for thirty-five years. I didn’t want to get mixed up with them again.”

 

Natasha turned around in the passenger seat to look at the other woman. “You were listed as KIA in ‘86. What happened?”

 

Rebecca didn’t answer right away. “Bad mission. My team didn’t make it. I spent almost six years in a prison camp in Bolivia.”

 

“So you let Howard experiment on you, and then you started working field missions?” Steve demanded.

 

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Rebecca told him sharply. “Once they saw what Howard had done to me…” she trailed off. “It was either a lab or the field.”

 

“What did he do to you?” Steve asked in a low voice.

 

“He was trying to recreate the Rebirth Serum,” Rebecca replied.

 

“ _Shit_ , Becca!” Steve burst out, and Sam knew it was serious, because Steve _never_ swore in front of women, not even Natasha, who could cuss a blue streak if she got mad enough.

 

“You don’t get to judge me, Steven Grant Rogers!” Rebecca yelled back.

 

“But you  had to know how bad that could have gone,” Steve argued.

 

“I was breathing through a tube, Steve,” Rebecca told him. “I couldn’t walk. Couldn’t move my arms. I could barely blink. I was _going to die_ . _Anything_ would have been better.”

 

Steve fell silent for a long time. Sam stared at the road ahead but he could see Natasha out of the corner of his eye, still twisted to look into the back seat, very much invested in the conversation.

 

After a few minutes, Steve finally spoke again, his tone no longer accusatory. “How’d it work for you? What did it do?”

 

“Well, I’m not super strong or anything,” Rebecca replied, also much more calm. “But my healing factor went through the roof. Part of that is the not aging thing, which Howard was really surprised to find out. We didn’t really notice it until about… fifteen years later, or something? I got mistaken for Peggy’s daughter. She did _not_ take that well.”

 

“I imagine not,” Natasha said, amused.

 

Sam heard Rebecca snort indelicately. “Yeah. So Howard ran a whole bunch more tests, but he couldn’t recreate the results and Peggy made him stop after a while because he stopped working on anything else. He had a newborn, you know, and he was always working…” She trailed off. “Not that it did any good. Peggy and I raised that poor kid more than Howard did.”

 

“Wait,” Natasha interjected. “You used to take care of _Tony_?”

 

“Yeah,” Rebecca said slowly. “I was living at Howard’s at the time. He didn’t want to let me out of his sight. Maria was completely overwhelmed, so Peggy and I pitched in when we could. I mean, Peg had her own kids, but she was great with Tony. Me, not so much.”

 

“Oh, I have _so_ many questions,” Natasha said.

 

“Actually, so do I,” Rebecca said. “Why were you guys looking for me in the first place?”

 

That was not a question Sam wanted to answer, and it appeared Natasha and Steve didn’t much want to answer it, either. The silence grew from strained to awkward before Rebecca finally broke it.

 

“Steve, what aren’t you telling me?”

 

Steve cleared his throat. “Becca, you were in Ottawa in March of 1992, right?”

 

“Yes,” Rebecca replied warily.

 

“What happened?” Steve pressed.

 

There was another long moment of silence. “Yeah. Okay. I should probably start at the beginning,” Rebecca said with a sigh.

 

“What, exactly, is the beginning?” Natasha asked.

 

“Well, it began with my mission going to shit and getting stuck in Bolivia for six years,” Rebecca said sarcastically. “But after that, it was December 9th, 1991. That’s the day I escaped from the prison camp. Took me a week to get back to New York.”

 

“You were in New York on December 16th, 1991?” Natasha demanded sharply.

 

“Yeah. I was,” Rebecca said wearily.

 

“Why? What happened on December 16th?” Sam demanded, feeling out of the loop.

 

“That was the day Howard and Maria Stark were killed in a car crash,” Natasha informed him.

 

Rebecca took a deep breath. “It wasn’t a car crash,” she said grimly.

 


End file.
